Dick Heidt - City Magazine

Bismarck for male inmates considered a
minimum security risk. John’s next assignment
admittedly may have been the most
important in his young life: he went into the
Tompkins Rehabilitation and Corrections
Center, a 100-day, high-intensity treatment
program for drugs and alcohol in Jamestown.
“It was the best treatment I ever went to,”
says John. “It actually sunk in.” He had other
treatments, so why this time? “I would have
to say because of my stay in prison,” he says.
Prison in N.D. is not like the life-anddeath
atmosphere inmates often face daily in
prisons in Texas or Calif. or Ohio. “You go
to prison here, especially the MRCC, and it’s
more like a bad vacation,” he says. “But the
thing that got me to really take it seriously
was being away from my family. Family is a
big thing to me.”
So it was his five-year-old daughter, his
wife and his parents–all supportive, he says–
that finally made the difference. Hopefully.
Now he hopes the upcoming parole
board will see him as a changed person, not
the “drug-addicted, cold, hard person” he had
been. And not a “con” now saying the right
things to get out.
For those young people risking drugs on
the outside, John has some thoughts. “I know
it’s easy to use one of those quick outs, those
quick getaways by getting high or drunk,” he
says. “But it doesn’t solve the problem in the
end. It’s better to take your problems head on
and sober to turn your life around.”
John just may have made that turn.
April 2009 33